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PM Netanyahu meets with French FM Fabius

8/25/2013

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For too long people believed that the root cause of instability in the
Middle East was the Palestinian-Israeli problem. It is not the root
cause; it’s one of its results of the regional turmoil. If we have peace with the Palestinians, the centrifuges
will not stop spinning in Iran, the turmoil will not stop in Syria, the
instability in North Africa will not cease, the attacks on the West
will not cease.

PM Netanyahu meets with French FM FabiusCopyright: GPO/Kobi Gideon

GPO/Kobi Gideon

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(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)

Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Sunday afternoon (25 August 2013)
with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and said at the start of the
meeting:

"I know that France shares our interest in the ongoing
events in Syria that are tragic. I think what is going on there is a
crime committed by the Syrian regime against its own people. It’s truly
shocking. And these atrocities must stop.

I have to say, however,
that Assad’s regime is not acting alone. Iran, and Iran's proxy,
Hezbollah, are there on the ground playing an active role assisting
Syria.

In fact, Assad's regime has become a full Iranian client
and Syria has become Iran's testing ground. Now the whole world is
watching. Iran is watching and it wants to see what would be the
reaction on the use of chemical weapons.

What we see in Syria is
how extremist regimes have no reservations whatsoever about using these
weapons even when they use it against innocent civilians, against their
own people. This demonstrates, yet again, that we simply cannot allow
the world's most dangerous regimes to acquire the world's most dangerous
weapons. In the end, the extremists use these weapons. So we must
prevent them from having these weapons.

I speak here of course in
the context of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran must not be
allowed to get nuclear weapons. What is happening in Syria, simply
demonstrates what will happen if Iran gets even deadlier weapons.

I
think the situation in Syria also exposes another truth, and that is
that there is something very deep and very broad in the turmoil in the
Middle East. We see the entire region from Morocco to Afghanistan in
turmoil, in convulsion, in instability. And that’s an endemic
instability that is not rooted in this or that conflict but in the
rejection of modernity, in the rejection of moderation, in the rejection
of progress, in the rejection of political solutions.

This is in
fact the core of the problem in the Middle East. It’s something that
threatens everyone, threatens moderate regimes, threatens Israel,
threatens the West and threatens all those who don’t believe in the
doctrinaire dogmas that guide the extremists.

I say that because
for too long people believed that the root cause of this instability in
the Middle East was the Palestinian-Israeli problem. It is not the root
cause; it’s one of its results. It’s one of the results of the regional
turmoil, and in fact it is merely a manifestation of one of its many
problems.

If we have peace with the Palestinians, the centrifuges
will not stop spinning in Iran, the turmoil will not stop in Syria, the
instability in North Africa will not cease, the attacks on the West
will not cease.

We want peace for its own sake. We want peace
because we want peace with our Palestinian neighbors, because we want to
live in peace, and anybody who’s been at war know the consequences of
not having peace. But this will not put an end to the region’s problems.
They are far too deep, they are far too many, they require much more
complex solutions, but they require solutions.

This is something
that I would like to talk to you, about all these things: our pursuit of
peace with the Palestinians, the situation in Syria, the rampant
instability in the region and above all, a goal we share closely – that
is how to make sure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons. All
these and many others, I’m sure we’ll have an opportunity to discuss so
welcome to Jerusalem."